COMING FULL FESTIVAL CIRCLE!
"All I need to do is believe in my pokemon!"
Score: 8/10
We have, by this point, reached the semifinals. Dwuh? You're just going to skip all of the other other rounds? But... it's a perfect excuse for filler that's not technically filler, just have Dawn fight, like, uh... Lars... with his... Luxray and Muk? Maybe? I mean, why not, this way you can avoid having to make another filler episode later! Well, whatever. The semifinals will be Nando/Zoey and Dawn/Jessie. At night, Dawn, Nando, and Zoey all get together and talk about... You know, I just watched it and I'm still not sure what they were talking about.
The next day: Zoey versus Nando. Mismagius/Leafeon versus Kricketune/Lopunny. Nando scores some points by having Lopunny act like a ballerina with Kricketune playing music. However, Nando's gimmick of being a bard works against him: Zoey knew he'd use sing, so she brought Mismagius solely to use lucky chant to counter it. Both begin working by countering the other, and they each perform amazingly, and Dawn realizes that both are better than her... but at the end of the day, only one can win, and that's the one who uses psywave to create psychic wings for Leafeon to fly on. Zoey wins, of course, by running Nando out of time.
With five minutes left in the episode, we have Dawn versus Jessie. Buneary/Cyndaquil versus Seviper/Carnivine. We actually get a significant part of this episode from Joanna's perspective as she watches TV... a TV that's just out of the audience's view. We get like forty-five seconds of actual battling, after which Dawn runs Jessie out of time again. Jessie threatens Dawn, telling her that she better win or by God, she’ll spend the rest of her life harassing Ash for his Pikachu, and stomps off.
This was actually a really good episode primarily because 60% of it was not about the main characters. It’s all about Zoey and Nando showing that they’re great, which is a nice change of pace-- we're frequently told how good a character is rather than shown, and not only are we shown this time, but we’re actually shown at the expense of the main characters: Nando and Zoey don’t show up often, so they get the majority of the episode, while Dawn and Jessie, who show up every episode (I think Jessie has been in literally every single episode except the first, actually), get only a bit of time to wrap things up. It’s clear they put a lot of effort into the Zoey/Nando battle, which is actually really cool and really compelling (even if it’s obviously twice as long as the five minute timer should allow). If I have one complaint, it’s that Nando kind of needs more characterization to care about-- he shows up so rarely that when he matches Zoey move for move, despite clearly being competent, it’s like… “okay, great.”
Also: a Lopunny and Kricketune? For real?
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Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig.
Started: July 6, 2005